KURT WEILL-BERT BRECHT: The Seven Deadly Sins; Songs from The Berliner Requiem, Happy End, Mahagonny, and The Three-Penny Opera – Gisela May/Male quartet/Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra/Herbert Kegel – Berlin Classics Reference

by | Jan 11, 2007 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

KURT WEILL-BERT BRECHT: The Seven Deadly Sins; Songs from The Berliner Requiem, Happy End, Mahagonny, and The Three-Penny Opera – Gisela May/Male quartet/Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra/Herbert Kegel; also [in songs] Studio male choir and orchestra/Heniz Rögner & Henry Krtschil – Berlin Classics Reference 1375, 70:31 *****:

The main interest here is a reissue from 1966 of what is considered the most authentic interpretation of the offbeat and bitter Brecht-Weill collaboration Die sieben Todsünden – aside from the original recording of ten years earlier featuring Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya.  May captures perfectly Lenya’s style – described by The Village Voice as “angry, earthy, dream-filled, nightmarish, vociferous, soft, exciting, fire-breathing and icy theatre” – but does it with a clearly better voice. So many other Weill-thrushes have tried in the past, but those from the theater world usually fail (Although Ute Lemper stands out), and those from the operatic world fail even worse since Weill intended his songs for the untrained voice.

The scenario of the ballet The Seven Deadly Sins involves a family in Louisiana (Brecht and Weill loved exotic American words such as Mississippi) who send out two sisters both named Anna (one sings while the other dances) to make money in various U.S. cities and send it back to them to build their new house. The family is represented by a male quartet. The stories turn the religious idea of the sins upside down, with the Annas usually succeeding by not resisting the particular sin. At the end they return home to Louisiana exhausted.

The 11 songs from various earlier Brecht-Weill stage productions are all sung in German and there is no translation provided. Even the overall CD title is only in German aside from Happy End – which was titled that way in English originally. Fortunately, though I know no German, I was somewhat familiar with the words thru English versions sung by Lenya and others.

SongList: Vom ertrunkenen Madchen, Surabaya-Johnny, Bilbao-Song, Was die herren Matrosen sagen, Ballade von der Höllen-Lili, Havanna-Song, Wie man sich bettet so liegt man, Barbara-Song, Song von der sexuellen Hörigkeit, Pirate Jenny, Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen.

– John Sunier

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